Commercially-available optical filters are used for various purposes. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,141,469 to Kashyap, there is disclosed a multiple band pass optical filter that may be used in a wavelength division multiplexed (“WDM”) communication system to filter individual WDM channels. U.S. Pat. No. 6,169,828 B1 to Cao, also relating to an optical filter, discloses a dense wavelength division multiplexer (“DWDM”) for use in a fiber optic network. Various optical filters are well known to those skilled in the art.
Current methods of manufacturing such optical filters involve manually moving trays of optical filters, from the manufacturing station to a filter-testing station, and then manually testing each filter one at a time. An operator must manually pick a filter from the transfer tray, place it in a testing jig, align the filter in the jig either manually or automatically, test it with a laser and detector system, remove it from the jig, and place it back into the transfer tray. This process is unsatisfactory because it is very slow and prone to human error. Typical throughput is only 20–100 filters per hour.